My wife and I recently finished watching Downton Abbey. (Behind the times, I know.) One of the interesting features of the series is how often a character, when asked about some important matter, will answer with something like, "It is not my place to have an opinion." It's not just the servants who express such sentiments; even among the aristocracy, this sense of boundaries is keenly felt.
It strikes me that contemporary America is need of such a sense of boundaries. At present, whenever there is a problem or controversy anywhere in the country, people a thousand miles away begin commenting on things about which they know very little and social media storms brew in no time. Apart from the most grave forms of injustice, we need to trust our fellow citizens in other communities and other states to resolve their own problems. We need to trust that good people in other places will be the voices of decency and reason. They don't need us pontificating about every headline that crosses our news feed.
No comments:
Post a Comment